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Brexit

Hi,
what is your opinion about Brexit?
Very strange, it was not easy to find information about what would happen if the result was yes or no.
I read some articles about it, and there was no common opinions about it. Some said it would be bad to exit, some said it would be very bad. Some specialists could predict some aspects, others point other problems.
But short term and long term consequences are different, and i think no one could explain exactly why you should vote yes or no from a point of view of UK and Europe.
If you sum the pros and cons of the yes and no, in the end what is the best choice?
I saw a lot of people that vote without knowing what they were doing.
I cannot see why Uk should exit, or putting it in a different way, i cannot find more good points in the exit then the remain. Both sides could have some reason, but how has more logic?
Anyone can point me more a valid reason for the exit?

Coming from a norwegian who is glad Norway is outside, it might seem strange that I think it would've been best for the UK to stay in. Or, it shouldn't have left for the reasons it did. The arguments I read is that you sent oh so much money to the EU all the time, but in fact if you analyse you had some perks for being a member that will now cost you more money to maintain. Trade with EU countries isn't going to stop, but it will also not come as cheap as it did for example. Not in sheer monetary value perhaps, but the EU will demand other benefits in return for maintaining trade agreements and such, ultimately making the net result more costly than it was.

Also, a big point was made about cheap labour immigrants and how leaving EU will help stop that. In short, it won't. Norway has never been a member, and cheap labour immigrants is a big problem here as well. They have taken over some professions almost entirely, being so cheap that it is impossible to compete. My own profession struggles with it as well, but fortunately we have a strong union who is fighting it. But it is still a major problem.

There may be other and better reasons for leaving, I don't know. But those reasons weren't worth it. The UK actually had some of the best terms as a member among all the EU nations. That is one of the reasons I don't want Norway to join, we are not as strong economically or politically and cannot hope to get much better terms and trade agreements as a member. We will most likely be no better off than we are. As long as we have our huge oil and gas reserves that the EU depends on, we have some leverage while remaining outside. We don't need to join to get benefits from the EU, so joining would mostly just add more of the drawbacks.

I think a lot of people are pissed off with the EU because they boss us around way too much and it costs us a fortune.

I voted to remain in the EU, as I thought that would be the better option overall, but there are advantages to both, and I personally would have been happy with either. I actually thought the remain vote would win, so I was slightly surprised when we voted to leave.

I do know quite a few people who voted to leave. Not sure of their specific reasons though.

Immigration was a big issue. Free movement of people was a big reason many people voted to leave. People have got fed up with small communities being overrun with migrants whom don't integrate into the country, but instead set up their own version of their homeland with their own shops etc.

Regarding cheap labour, we have minimum and living wage laws so no one is actually cheap labour. It's more unskilled benefit claimers being too lazy to fill those roles, and employers knowing they will work harder than many UK lower class workers. Change our laws to force them into unskilled jobs in return for their benefit payments and that would quickly change.

@Teho. Doesn't Norway have a trade agreement with the EU which requires them to still contribute into the EU funds without any of the membership powers? And at the same time accept free movement of EU migrants?

This will not be an acceptable agreement for many in the UK as it was a core reason for voting leave.

There were many other reasons for leaving the EU. Many were fed up with EU control over our laws and regulations, whilst we observed many other EU countries not needing to abide by them.

There is also the migrant camp in France. The French are threatening to move it to the UK and remove border checks at their end. France also showed their true colours once we voted leave. They never wanted us in the EU anyway. They vitoed our original application in the 50s and we had to wait until 1975 to join the common market.

We also never agreed to join an EU superstate. In the 70s we joined a common market. This has slowly crept up to being a superstate, with unelected officials in Brussels dictating laws and regulations. Many voiced there dislike of this.

I think at the moment governments are panicking and not sure what our how the future will pan out.

The UK is the 5th largest economy in the world and a financial capital. We were also the second largest economy in Europe. I really think the European leaders are venting anger at the moment towards us because they are shocked and scared about the EUs future. They have suddenly lost the main founding country of the EU idea, the country whom setup the court of human rights and a country that holds a lot of political weight outside of Europe. Yes this will all change slightly now we are out, but until we get a new PM, issue article 50, and bash out the exit strategy and then new EU agreement we really can't predict anything.

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Immigration was a big issue. Free movement of people was a big reason many people voted to leave. People have got fed up with small communities being overrun with migrants whom don't integrate into the country, but instead set up their own version of their homeland with their own shops etc.

Regarding cheap labour, we have minimum and living wage laws so no one is actually cheap labour. It's more unskilled benefit claimers being too lazy to fill those roles, and employers knowing they will work harder than many UK lower class workers. Change our laws to force them into unskilled jobs in return for their benefit payments and that would quickly change.

That is certainly an issue, but given the number of 'asian communities' we have here in England, its not specific to the EU. If you walk through some parts of Rotherham, you could easily be forgiven for thinking you were somewhere outside of Europe. TBH, most of the foreigners I come across are nice, and don't cause any trouble, but still, it can seem very unusual when there are a lot of them.

With regards to the unskilled labour thing, I think one of the issues is employers taking advantage. AFAIK, many foreigners work for sh1tty employers with cr4p conditions. It would appear that they do this because it is still better than what they get at home, and they don't have the language skills or legal knowledge to do anything about it. If English people did these sorts of jobs, employers would not get away with bad behavior because the unions and courts would do something about it.

@Teho. Doesn't Norway have a trade agreement with the EU which requires them to still contribute into the EU funds without any of the membership powers? And at the same time accept free movement of EU migrants?

Norway has access to the EU market and EEA through its EFTA membership. Norway does send funds to the EU as part of participating in certain programs. We are not forced to do this, we wish to participate and pay our share. We don't have the powers of full EU membership, no, but we are in a strong bargaining position due to EU requiring our gas, and we also export our surplus clean hydroelectrical power to the EU. In fact while we have access to the EU market, the EU does not have full access to ours. Specifically in agricultural products, to protect the norwegian agriculture there are high import duties on products from other countries, making them too expensive to compete. So norwegian stores will mostly only have norwegian-produced foods, while only having the odd foreign product which will be more expensive. So when they do have them it is usually fancy stuff that would be expensive anyway. This is one thing the EU is known to dislike and wants to have abolished, but can't. For consumers it would be good as they would be able to buy cheaper foods that are just as good, but it would kill off the norwegian farming industry who wouldn't be able to compete. To quote the EEA article linked above:

Originally Posted by wikipedia

The EEA is based on the same "four freedoms" as the European Community: the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital among the EEA countries. [...] Agriculture and fisheries are not covered by the EEA. Not being bound by the Common Fisheries Policy is perceived as very important by Norway and Iceland, and a major reason not to join the EU.

Our open borders weren't forced on us by the EU either, that's part of the EEA agreement. There is also already an agreement between the nordic countries to have open borders between us which has existed since long before any of the nordic countries became EU members so is much older than that as well.

EEA participation does require adopting some EU regulations but on the whole we're not in a bad place at all. While it may seem that Norway is forced to abide by the EU's rules and legislations it is actually due to the EEA agreement which we are willingly participating in. EU cannot readily add new rules and legislations to the EEA without members including Norway agreeing to them, and we are in a strong position when negotiating these things as they don't want us to leave the EEA. So it is actually not so easy for the EU to force anything on us.

That's very good that fisheries and agriculture are protected. These have been badly hit by the EU in the UK. A lot of the vegetables and fruit sold in our shops are from other countries, and uk farmers can't compete on price. The UK did impose a law whereby sellers have to declare the origin of food in its packaging, so at least we know it's not British and where it came from.

Milk has also been badly affected because the EU dictates the price farmers are allowed to sell their milk wholesale. Due to this they have been selling it at a loss. Something like -2p per litre, which is non sustainable and therefore a lot of farms that have been milk farms for over 100 years have had to stop farming.

Fisheries is also really badly hit by the EU. Remember the sea fishing blockades of the 70s and 80s? The EU gave Spanish fisherman the right to fish in our waters, stealing all of our fish and decimating out sea fishing industry. Many southern coastal fishing villages and fleets no longer have a fishing industry at all because of this.

UK farmers so receive EU grants though so could equally be affected by the exit. We will have to wait and see if what we recover from leaving balances out what we receive at the moment.

One area where the UK really won't agree to a deal on is immigration and free movement, and this could be the single biggest problem when our leave negotiations begin. A large proportion voted to leave purely because they wanted to see an end to open borders.

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